4828/Secret Doors: A wind in the door

Secret Doors: A wind in the door
Date of Scene:	22 January 2021
Location:	Avengers Mansion - Study
Synopsis:	Pepper is pulled from her ghostly 'vacation'.
Cast of Characters:	Tony Stark, Pepper Potts

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Tony Stark has posed:
The device that Tony provided to Pepper, once set up, began to emit a weird, sort of uncomfortable frequency. It doesn't make for a lot of fun to hang out near it... but something else also happens.

Strange little flutters of /shapes/ things that seem to partially exist, move away along the ceiling and floor like ripples on a pond, as the 'sound' or vibration from the device makes an apparent effect on the environment all around it.

So while it might feel a little like a dentist's drill-- it seems to be also causing some shift beyond Pepper's awareness. A shadow passes near the door, something moving out there, that the lenses pick up in a red, heavy bulk of glowing mass....

Pepper Potts has posed:
Once gaining the backpack with the various and sundry items with which to construct her makeshift portal-creator, Pepper's fallen back to the room where the two of them had taken refuge before. She now sports her own set of glasses while the drone continues to 'wear' his, her own now lending that second set of eyes calibrated to the most likely frequency for 'seeing' the creature.

Pepper's tired, setting up the circle with increasingly heavier actions, and once she's finished, she sits down on the floor, her legs set to the side. Red, unbrushed hair is pushed back away from her face in a useless gesture, and with a glance given to the little robot, she gives a flicker of a wan smile. "Okay, let's turn this on."

Standing when the power from the drone surges through the connection, Pepper is looking up and around at the wisps of the shapes of //things// as they flutter, seemingly dancing on the waves of the distortion field. Her breath catches as she stares, though the very //sound// of the generator begins to dig into her senses, bringing a grimace of discomfort. She shakes her head to dislodge the sound, a vain attempt at perhaps changing the modulation in the hearing, and as she does, just off to the side of her vision, a glowing mass of red begins to appear.

Her breath catches in her throat, green eyes widen as there is an attempt to try to make some sense of the form appearing. A step is taken back, her attention goes to the drone; he's been good at alerting to danger?

Tony Stark has posed:
The drone is reacting to everything moving, though, and is orienting here and there with little pings of alertness. It's like overloading an email server with tons of mail - it just keep cheeping about all the stuff it's witnessing, without any sense of priority.

Most of this is probably NOT junk mail, though.

The largest mass at the doorway starts to form more; a branching tree, a river of spreading pieces of red that flutter and then surge out around the doorway, brushing up into the walls, as if they weren't even there. Maybe to this creature, they aren't? Can it just see through walls anyway?

Pepper Potts has posed:
It may very well be too much to ask of the little guy, what with the fact that Pepper's using him to light the lights, to set up up the beacon. Still, is it? Is it really?

Staring at the doorway now fully, Pepper takes another step back, mindful of the lights, the wiring for the technological summoning circle. There's no way through the door to escape out, thanks to the creature there now blocking the exit.

She's tired, she's stressed, she's afraid, and now Pepper's got the feeling that she's trapped. The glasses only confirm that it's blocking her escape in that direction, and is coming into 'her' room. "Tonyâ?¦" is spoken softly, though in the second syllable, her voice rises. She moves to stand closer to the circle, calling into the void, searching for that wispiness that she'd seen before when Tony'd been pulled clear. "Tony.." and again, there is the edge of fear in the rise of her voice.

Tony Stark has posed:
"SQRRRREEEEEE," says the drone, and suddenly races towards Pepper and the little setup, dragging cords into a mess, tangling itself up a little bit. It paces back and forth around in the circle, as if it could sense something there, and was responding to it: like a dog aware that the door is just about to open, and desperately wanting to go outside.

Then, the behavior changes, and it drops to the center of the circle, settling there, oddly dormant, as the power demands of the gateway kick up into a higher pitch. The drone goes silent... but the light emitted from the setup starts to grow equally intense, even with how the drone lowers in activity. A spike of shadows, weird ghosts, erupt around the circle: a whole pile of eerie, human-like ghastly shapes...

And then Pepper's shoulders are touched from behind, fingers and hands trying to pull...

But not scary. Tony's pulled her back from the brink of certain-death danger before.

Pepper Potts has posed:
Pepper has an unfortunate tendency to freeze when confronted with extreme danger, or rather, in circumstances that she truly doesn't quite understand that could very well be dangerous. She stands and stares, knowing full well that //something// is wrong, but she can't quite put her finger on what it is, or what needs to be done; not until the last minute, anyway.

Then? Then she moves.

Like that deer in the headlights, she's frozen in place as she stares at the creature, it's smokey, wispy tendrils searching out the walls of her fall back. It found her, it finally found her, and she is staring at it, all while she's got Tony's name on her lips.

The frantic powering up of the drone, however, pulls her from the fear-fueled hesitation, forcing her attention upon the little guard. Green eyes widen as she watches the increase of light, the shifting of power from the drone to the circle, and in the next second, starts in surprise at the touch of her shoulders.

It's a tug, a pull through layers of.. dimension, and as she's taken, the hands that have hold of her grow warmer. The surroundings grow fuzzy, take form.. and then as she emerges on the other side, grows fuzzy once more; only now, there's a familiar face before she begins to lose consciousness.

He's saved her.

Tony Stark has posed:
"Hey," Tony says, tone assured, but with a gentle undertone he tends to get when he's looking after her. That proof that there's a deeper seat of emotion when it comes to Pepper, under all the bravado.

"You're safe now. Good to have you back."